


The Worse For Me That I Am Strong

by TrantRazber



Series: A Heart As Deep [2]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Blackwatch Jesse McCree, Blackwatch Reaper | Gabriel Reyes, Jack Morrison has high-functioning anxiety, Jack and Gabe are sad and gay, Jack's P.O.V., Jesse McCree is a smooth operator, M/M, More Myself Than I, PTSD hallucinations, and no one can tell me otherwise, blackwatch jesse mccree but he's not seventeen b/c i can't, the forbidden ship: mcsoldier
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-01
Updated: 2018-03-20
Packaged: 2018-12-09 22:35:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 11,427
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11678478
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TrantRazber/pseuds/TrantRazber
Summary: A companion fic for More Myself Than I, re-told from Jack's point of view with some added new scenes to bring the story together. Some deep diving into Jack's psyche, and how a golden-haired farm-boy from Indiana carries his love for he who is apart of him through war-time, all with our favorite vaquero Jesse McCree poised in the middle of the chaos.





	1. You In My Sights

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Jack is paralyzed by waking nightmares that may feel too familiar to truly be monsters

It’s happening again.

It’s eleven-something in the morning, Jack’s in the kitchen on the compound Watchpoint: Gibraltar getting his third cup of coffee this morning and it’s happening again.

He knows first because of the smell – arid and pungent, like a grease fire burning in an auto-shop. An oil tanker on fire in the desert. It’s like standing epicenter in a whirling vortex of black smoke, only he can see just fine – can see _everything_.

His hand is on the handle of the mug of coffee, his eyes fixed like crosshairs on the counter, unseeing past the chipping linoleum. There’s just that smell of choking smoke – not choking, more like _strangling_ because that’s how it feels. Like it’s coming from the inside, gripping Jack with a smoky tendril curled around his heart so that he’s rooted to the spot and circling around his feet, his gut, his throat.

With his hand on the mug.

With his eyes on the counter.

It’s happening again.

In the kitchen, alone, is where the fear corners him. His back is to the open kitchen; Jack is acutely aware that his back is to the only doorway, the fact acts as an alarm screaming out over the sound of his paralyzed paranoia like a violin shrill and shrieking and super-powered with military tactical training and yet still he cannot turn from where he stands.

Jack’s heart in his chest, in his ears, in his temples – it’s pounding like an automatic machine gun, a mini OR-15 inside his head firing round after round into the black abyss in the back of his mind that would swallow him up.

It’s happening again.

He knows because even though it’s tethered him here to this counter, Jack can feel the sweat roll down his forehead in small drops. It’s cool on the back of his neck. Though he can’t see behind him, he _knows-_

 _It’s there_.

He’s seen it before, caught it in glimpses out of the corner of his eye: black and billowing and shapeless, like something smoldering from the inside, impossibly fluid in its motions, impossible blackness opaque and lurking and ready to smother him.

It sits behind him like a stalking panther – he knows it’s there, can feel its formless touch like a body leaning heavier and heavier on his back as it approaches –  and he grips his coffee, the sound of his own blood rushing in his ears rising as a crescendo of static chaos. It sounds like the roar of the ocean against Gibraltar’s rocks outside.

It’s happening again.

He knows because more than anything, more than the fear sitting in his throat like a ballast, more than every single one of his Super Soldier instincts flooding his senses with the urge to run, the darkness creeping up on him here in the kitchen feels disarmingly like _home_ in a way Jack can’t remember outside of fleeting dreams of Indiana corn fields and clove-flavored kisses.

It’s calling to him even now, every second it creeps closer, each moment stretching longer until there’s nothing but him.

And it.

It’s happening.

Jack realizes with slow, sickening clarity that here in the kitchen with his feet rooted to the spot by adrenaline and his every synapse over-flowing with the frantic desire to flee – all he wants is to let it the animal fear embrace him completely.

Again.

. . .

Jack was yanked from his waking nightmare by the sound of ceramic breaking. The feeling of hot coffee on his hand sank in some moments later. The monster, the presence, the nightmare – whatever it was – was gone, and he was not some Indiana farm-boy sneaking kisses during basic training. He was the fearless Strike Commander Jack Morrison of Overwatch, and he had coffee stains to see to and a mug to replace.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THIS IS MY FIRST TIME WRITING FROM INSIDE JACK i'm sorry in advance i love you all stay tuned for moar~*~  
> Hope you all enjoy a quick start to this bit! I'm really excited about where this is going to go and I cannot express enough gratitude to everyone who has left a comment or a kudos or passed my stuff on to a friend. Y'all are inspiring, and I'm having a blast exploring Jack and Gabe together with a little McCree sprinkled on top for flavoring. I hope that you enjoy this piece as much as you seemed to enjoy my last one. Honestly I'm over the moon that people have been so encouraging that I'm even writing this as a follow-up at all. Thanks so much friends <3


	2. Still Ill

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Jack wrestles with his demons, past and present, and takes a cue from a friendly cowboy on who's the best medicine for his aching heart.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NOTE: I royally fucked the timeline here for my own purposes in that the Blackwatch Jesse McCree we see here is much older than the canon 17 y/o he would actually be - for consent/age purposes mostly. I do my best to display examples of healthy consent, as you'll see in this chapter especially, despite the inherent power dynamic present across their ranks within OW so it's important to me as well that we don't have any large age gaps like the canon one of 20 years between Gabe/McCree, etc. thanx friends <3
> 
> ALSO NOTE: All of Jesse McCree's simile's in this fic come from Blanche Devareux of The Golden Girls because you KNOW he watched that show like crazy. c'mon. C'MON.

Jack was pretty sure that nowhere in the job description of Strike Commander did it mention cleaning up coffee and bits of broken ceramic. As he ran a paper towel slicked with soap over the counter top, some part of him argued that a soldier was never too highly ranked to stop cleaning up after himself.

Especially when it had been his own damn fault in the first place.

Barely managing to hold in a sigh of exasperation, Jack gazed mournfully at the coffee stain on his t-shirt. It was fairly small – he had only really managed to get the hem of it, but given that the thing was a predictable shade of military starched white and he was, as ever, _Strike Commander Jack Morrison_ , it was a problem.

Another problem, added to the list of ongoing problems and problematic variables.

The hallucinations had been happening more often, lately. Coming and going at random like the echoes of some far-off event Jack wasn’t privy to, but still felt the aftershocks of like it was happening in real-time.

Jack wasn’t totally fried – he knew they were just hallucinations.

Ghosts.

Christ, he hadn’t even been able to bring himself to _look at it_ this time, as if he could forget what it looked like to begin with. Once upon a time he had only heard gunshots and cries for help when he was eating in the mess hall or cleaning his gun, none of this visceral sense-of-existential-fucking-terror in demon-ghost form coming up to eat _him_.

Once upon a time he hadn’t been a super soldier.

Once upon a time he hadn’t been Strike Commander.

Once upon a time felt like a million lifetimes ago.

Jack trashed the last of the soiled paper-towels/tactical-necessity casualties in the war on coffee stains and tried to push the urge to self-analyze and nit-pick aside for the thousandth time this morning. The teams had a training simulation coming up, which would mean peace for Jack for a while. The waking nightmares stayed away when he was working – in a crisis he would be ready, he would be present, as he always had been. As he always _would_ be.

The fear, though, was hard to shake.

Walking back to his room, Jack told himself he was going for a clean shirt and maybe some cold water for his face but the watchful feeling of something lingering just in the corner of his vision clung to him like the smell of cigarette smoke in clothes. In truth, what he was doing was making a very slow and deliberate retreat.

He fiddled nervously with nothing in his pockets as he walked, searching in his mind for some safe thoughts to settle on until he could get to the safety of his bedroom door closed and locked behind him and found the answer in the form of a familiar face that filled his mind with the smell of clove cigarettes, warm brown eyes, and dirty phrases spoken in hushed Spanish that Jack only half understood.

The very same face appeared right as Jack was rounding the corner back towards the barracks, shoulders thrust back and his head held high like he was looking for a fuck, or a fight.

Gabe looked like shit; Jack didn’t need super soldier eyes to see that, but it helped.

Jack noticed the darkness under Gabe’s eyes first, little purple sinkholes lining both – then the barely perceptible glistening of sweat at his temples and neck. Gabe’s brows were pulled together in concentrated anger, and his jaw was set fast and locked up tight to hold back whatever fire was burning on the tip of his tongue.  

Jack checked with his internal body clock (he was rarely ever off by more than a few minutes) – it was practically noon which meant somewhere Jesse McCree was getting ready to do something probably stupid _and_ dangerous but also that Gabriel Reyes should have been washed, dressed, bright eyed and ready to kill omnics at the drop of a hat.

Since when did Gabe oversleep? Maybe fifteen minutes here or there after some rough missions but this was – different. It explained his expression, anyway, which was enough to make Jack plaster a timid smile on his face as they approached one another.

“Look who finally showed up. Didn’t think I had to worry about _you_ getting lazy, Reyes,” Jack said with a nod of his head, giving Gabe a performative once-over as if that proved his point. He was trying to come off as light and friendly and _not_ like anxiety was running through his veins like electricity.

Not that it mattered.

Gabriel barely _looked_ at him – barely a glance and something profane and mumbled and Spanish and then he was gone, down the hall, and around the corner.

Gone.

When Gabe _had_ looked at him, it felt like he was seeing miles and miles away, right past Jack’s eyes and into somewhere else entirely. It made a pit of worry open up in Jack’s stomach that he could feel himself falling into with every step that took Gabe farther away from him in the opposite direction down the hallway.

The internal motion to push it away was muscle memory by now. Push it all away. Gabe could handle himself. The hallucinations were just from fatigue. Push, push, push.

. . .

The rest of the day went by in a blur of scheduled routine. Having changed into something clean and less coffee-splattered, Jack spent most of the afternoon and evening going over dossiers pertinent to various Overwatch directives past, present, and future. He found more and more that absorbing himself into a world of information and data was easier than trying to reconcile his physical reality of being stuck on this rock in Gibraltar with the abstract goals of peace, and victory, and justice.

But shit, it left him with a super-soldier-sized headache some days.

After so many hours had passed so that the darkness outside his window was a shock to Jack when he looked up from the holo-pad he was studying, the throbbing in his head and burning in his gut told him it was time to take a break.

The hunger he could do something about; it was too late to be bothered to fix anything large for himself now but he was in the habit of keeping a few protein bars on hand lest Angela start to question his eating habits, lately (mostly her question about his eating was: “Are you?”). In fact, “Mercy” herself had made them. It wasn’t a charity or anything so much as it was her unceremoniously shoving a handful of them towards him with a stern look not-taking-no-for-an-answer on her face. It was all Jack could have done to take them at the very least so that they didn’t get dropped all over the floor when she turned tail and walked away.

They were surprisingly tasty, and reminded him of how much he relied on Angela given that she was also in part a solution to the headache section of this problem, too.

With something in his stomach now, Jack left the safety of his room to head for the infirmary. Hopefully, Angela wouldn’t be there and he could just pop in and grab some pain killers and maybe get to bed a little early tonight before the training sim tomorrow morning. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to see her, exactly, just that it was all the better in Jack’s opinion if she didn’t know he was hurting.

It was only a headache, anyway.

The infirmary was quiet as Jack approached; it was small for an “infirmary” and was in fact more of a “room with a desk and some cabinets and enough space to cram an exam table in there”. Gibraltar was more or less a tactical occupation, and could house nothing like the medical wing they had available on their bigger outposts. From the outside he could see that the lights were still out, and Jack realized he had been holding his breath and chewing his lower lip when all at once his breath left him in a sigh of relief at the thought that he wouldn’t need to interact with anyone to get what he needed.

He wouldn’t need to _perform_ for anyone.

That had been the plan, anyway, until opening the door revealed to him the denim-dressed ass of one Jesse McCree, bent over and rifling through the lower cabinets on his hands and knees. He had, by the looks of things, been through the top ones already and was growing desperate.

At the sound of the door opening, Jesse cast a casual glance over his shoulder and, upon seeing it was Jack, apparently didn’t feel the need to change his behavior in any way other than saying: “Evenin’, Commander,” in the calmest version of that slow Southern drawl that he could manage. He said it so that Jack heard every syllable: _com-man-der_.

“What the _hell_ are you doing, McCree?” Jack demanded as he flicked a light on, all his disappointment at having run into someone when he’d thought he’d be alone now channeling into outrage and anger.

Jesse just chuckled in a way so that Jack didn’t need to see his face to know the smug expression that was painted on it.

“I sure am gettin’ that one a lot today,” McCree chimed over his shoulder again, still rifling about, still chuckling. Jack fixed his jaw and closed the distance between them in the little room with one, two, three, steps. It took every ounce of training in him not to put hands on Jesse in that moment.

Instead, he just spoke through gritted teeth: “How’s about you try _answering it then_ , before I get it out of you myself?” His head was pounding in his ears as he spoke.

“Just,” McCree started, grunting and shifting something in the cupboard.

“Looking …” More shifting.  More groaning.

“For …” Jack showed his impatience by tapping the toe of his boot ominously close to Jesse’s face where he was bent down with his hands in the cupboard.

“ _Ah-hah!_ ”

McCree extracted himself triumphantly, and there clutched in one hand was a glass bottle filled with a very familiar amber liquid. “Doc always keeps a bottle stashed in here,” Jesse explained, and he jostled the whiskey bottle in a little victory dance to the tune of the alcohol sloshing inside. “Figured now’s as good a time as any to break it out.”

The atmosphere around this place had been choked with tension even more so than usual, not that McCree was going to say anything. On some level, Jack understood what he meant. Not that _he_ was going to say anything.

McCree stood and closed the cupboard doors by way of knocking into them with his hip, grin on his face, all victorious smiles and suggestive eyebrow wiggles. Jack pretended like he didn’t notice the way Jesse’s throat tightened every time he met Jack’s gaze for longer than a second.

“You came down here just to steal alcohol from Angela?” Jack was genuinely puzzled as he glanced around. A room full of narcotics and synthesized pills that could do just about anything for you … and Jesse McCree only wanted to get whiskey drunk in a sterile environment, it seemed.

McCree tipped his hat in that way he did a thing that told Jack he thought he was being cute or something, and Jesse didn’t even need to look over his shoulder first to seat himself on top of the counter space there with a little wiggle and a hop – the wink at the end was just tossed on for flair, Jack assumed.

“Hey now,” Jesse purred, pointing at the bottle like it was friend he was introducing. “Sometimes it’s all a body can do to stay loose under all that’s goin’ on. Ain’t no shame in lookin’ for a little help.” The cowboy unscrewed the bottle and poured a sip or two down his throat before continuing. “I reckon you musta come by for somethin’ similar, there, Commander.”

Jack exhaled slowly. Calmly. With calculated precision he let his breath go. With a little more he felt the anger slip away. There was only so much worth getting upset at Jesse McCree over if you still wanted to have time to have a life, and this was not one of them.

Finally, with a lick of his lips, Jack said: “Something like that.”

His headache had dulled in the past few minutes, dialed back to a lurking reminder of something he’d need to handle later: one among a million same. For now he’d settle for making sure Jesse didn’t drink up all of Angela’s whiskey – _that_ was a situation worth avoiding.

“Well, here we are,” Jesse announced, swinging his legs a little over the counter’s edge and taking another small sip from the bottle. “Might as well get that somethin’ in ya, Morrison.”

With that he reached out a leg and hooked the office chair at Angela’s desk nearby with his foot so that he might pull it over in Jack’s direction like it was dance move he’d been practicing, and in the very next second he was offering Jack the bottle with the friendliest damn smile Jack had ever seen someone in an infirmary put on.

It felt very little like there was anything else to do but to sit and take the bottle, so he did. The alcohol stung as it rolled down Jack’s throat, familiar and real in a way not a lot of other things were these days.

Jack kept the bottle for the time being. McCree said nothing.

He managed to be silent for about two minutes while Jack felt himself beginning to sink into the office chair, until the telltale sound of Jesse McCree’s idle chuckling finally prevented him from paying attention to anything else – even the burn of the alcohol in his stomach.

“Something funny, recruit?” Jack asked, all business, though the usual bite to his tone was in this case less severe than normal.

“Mmm,” McCree groaned with a grin and outstretched his hand for the bottle which Jack reluctantly handed over after a second of hesitation and another sip. “Just thinkin’ about that time I was your bodyguard back on Hanamura. ‘fore Kid Shimada was runnin’ with us.”

Jack preferred not to think about that time. It wasn’t often that Jack Morrison was successfully ambushed – nevermind that they had managed to derail the attempt. He didn’t enjoy needing anyone around to “save” him, even his “bodyguard” as McCree had put it.

“I seem to remember you doing a lot more spilling and tripping than guarding any bodies,” Jack retorted. The corners of his mouth just slightly turned up into a hint of a smile at the memory of Jesse McCree eating shit and spilling tea in front of the Shimada clan leader – even if he _had_ done it on purpose as an excuse to get Jack’s pants off.

“Bullshit, soldier,” Jesse exclaimed, his drawl becoming longer and more melodic with every increase in his blood-alcohol-content. “I stuck to you like a tight shirt on a sweaty farmhand.” He passed the bottle back to Jack, which was a convenient means for Jack to stifle the chuckle that had started to escape him.

“Mh-“ Jack murmured as the bottle left his lips. “That was for an entirely different reason, I’m pretty sure.”

“Oh yeah?” McCree was practically purring, again. “And what reason is that, d’ya reckon?” Jesse’s eyes sparkled like the way his BAMF belt buckle glinted in the light like the way his Peacemaker shone even on a cloudy day.

Jack took another drink – slightly longer, this time – and handed the bottle back for good.

“Because you wanted to suck my cock, I guess,” Jack explained. His shoulders felt very loose now. The chair felt very soft. He was just tipsy enough to feel like he might never leave this chair again.

McCree, on the other hand, let loose with a holler and a “Shi- _it_ , partner! Get a little whiskey in ya and who knows what you’ll say next!” Jack had never heard “shit” turned into a two-syllable word before.

The outlaw’s face was plastered with that infamous Wanted Poster grin; it was almost too big for his cheeks. He took another drink and set the bottle down beside himself on the counter top, those big brown cowboy’s eyes having gone half-lidded and dreamy sometime in the last couple minutes.

To those, Jack asked: “It’s the truth, isn’t it?”

Given that Jesse had, in fact, furiously sucked his cock just some days after returning from Hanamura and more-or-less confessing his distraction had been rooted in that exact desire, Jack was pretty confident he was right about this one.

McCree unceremoniously jumped down from the counter so that he was standing in front of Jack, now, that little smirk curling up on his lips as he was clearly reliving their little tryst in the gym sauna. That had been some time ago, with a few repeat episodes here and there, each one a surprise to Jack – but a welcome one, no matter how he’d claim disinterest under official questioning. There was no lack of interdisciplinary fucking happening in closed isolation like this, even when it was the furthest thing from his mind.

“Yeah, alright, I reckon you’re right about that one, Jack,” McCree chuckled and moved that much closer to Jack. “You know, it was just exactly what I’d been hopin’ it’d be,” Jesse went on, before reaching out to pull the rolling chair by the arm rests towards him the rest of the way so that he was practically standing between Jack’s knees where he sat.

Jack, meanwhile, let the momentum of the chair throw his head back. His eyes closed of their own accord and he let himself revisit the memory. Jesse was right – it _had_ been good, even though he hadn’t been hoping for anything. The cowboy was surprisingly enthusiastic; images of McCree’s flushed cheeks and wanting gaze looking up at him from the sauna floor as he endeavored to swallow every last inch of Jack’s super soldier dick came flooding back to him with a jolt of electricity.

“Mmh,” Jack murmured, the hint of a smile on his face now spreading into something real. That was Jesse’s cue, apparently, because in the next second Jack felt a hand under his shirt, warm and rough and he heard Jesse in his ear mumble in that Southern twang: “How’s _this_ treatment, Jack? I’m no doctor, but I bet I can cure what’s ailin’ ya.”

The ghost of a breathless laugh left him as the hand on his stomach took a sudden detour south to palm at the growing erection in his pants he hadn’t noticed as of yet. Jesse seemed to settle his hand there, waiting with his lips still so close to Jack’s ear that he could smell cigars and sweat under the scent of whiskey coming from Jesse’s sun-kissed skin.

“You’re welcome to try,” Jack answered, his voice low and soft, and without thinking twice he moved a hand to the back of Jesse’s neck and threaded his fingers through the soft little hairs he found there. Later he’d wonder how the fuck Jesse managed to sweet-talk him so well, but for the moment it didn’t matter.

Jesse was soft and slow the way he moved down Jack’s neck with fleeting suckling kisses that pulled soft murmurs of approval from Jack, but McCree’s hand never left the front of Jack’s pants, always working him however he could through the fabric even when he dropped to his knees. Jack’s hand was still there on the back of his neck and he opened his eyes now to look at him with lazy pleasure.

“It’s a good angle for you,” Jack offered with a wry grin strictly reserved for late-night adventures with alcohol. It didn’t see much use, these days.

Undaunted, McCree only laughed that slow cowboy chuckle as he worked on Jack’s pants and went to yank them down. “Y’know – I’m not surprised to hear you say that, partner.”

If that was supposed to mean something to Jack, he didn’t get it, and didn’t have time to care with the way Jesse was kissing at his thighs like it was the only thing he knew how to do. Peeling down Jack’s underwear caused his half-erect cock to bob free in a way that made McCree’s eyes light up like Christmas lights.

“Shit, Jack, you’re thicker than Louisiana blackstrap molasses on a stack of Johnny cakes as high as an elephant’s knee!”

Where the _fuck_ did he get these things?

Jesse was sucking at his inner thigh in a way that he had to hold Jack’s hips in either hand to prevent the office chair from just rolling away from him, which meant all Jack had to do was sit and shudder beneath the cowboy’s eager mouth.

Jack’s head was swimming some from the alcohol and now the adrenaline, the feeling of McCree’s lips on his skin and the brush of facial hair against his thigh had him right back in the days of boot camp sitting on the sink counter with Gabe’s face buried between his thighs, his fingers curled around the edge the way they were curling around the arms of the chair, now.

Gabe.

Warm and real and always there and always loyal and always, always, always looking out for him.

_Gabe._

“Stop.”

Jack’s eyes opened after he said it.

McCree stopped.

He looked up at Jack from where he knelt down before him, puzzled and more than a little disappointed.

Jack Morrison had made up his mind – which meant that _this_ , was over.

“You better get to bed, recruit,” Jack said suddenly with a tiny bit of humor in his voice. He tucked himself back into his underwear and pulled his pants up just slowly enough to notice the red marks on his inner thigh that McCree had left from his affections.

Jesse stood with a little effort, and clucked his tongue at Jack chidingly. “I hear ya. Got somewhere to be all of a sudden?” The look in Jesse’s eye said more than Jack was willing to try and decipher. A little tipsy and still half-hard, Jack had places to _be_.

Places that weren’t here, with Jesse Fucking McCree giving him the once-over like he knew Jack’s life or _anything_ else about him.

“Thanks for the whiskey,” Jack called as he made for the door. “If Angela asks, I didn’t have anything to do with this.” He gestured vaguely behind himself to the slight disarray McCree had spread amongst her shelves and cabinets.

The sound of McCree’s lilting laughter followed him out the door even longer than the cigar smell did but Jack didn’t notice: he was headed for Gabe’s door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whoop here's chapter twoooo!! Finally some substance, right? This one is a little long, I'm still playing with the pacing but I'm trying to get this to be sort of as symmetrical to Gabe's version as I can (both titles are Wuthering Heights references, both their first chapter titles are their ults, both their second chapter titles are Smiths songs, and a bunch more actually in the works themselves). So you can guess if you've read the other one where this next bit is going - but this time we'll get to see how Jack feels about the whole thing. He's kind of a cutie about Gabe, it seems.
> 
> I just went ahead and referenced my other fanfic starring Jesse McCree for this one re: Jesse reminiscing about Hanamura so if that sounded at all entertaining to you: good news! You can read if you want to?! It's way more of a comedy fic than this one but there you go anyway.
> 
> Thanks again for everyone who's been reading, you are all so supportive and just amazing <3 <3 <3


	3. Jump In

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Jack hits up Gabe for a little late night escape from reality, only to find that reality has been all over Gabe without his noticing.

The walk to Gabe’s door was steady and celebratory; Jack sauntered through the base with the sort of casual ease that only alcohol given to him by Jesse McCree could realize. For these next few minutes, or hours, or however long Jack had with Gabe tonight, they could be isolated – together. Insulated from the schedule of the day, from the list of things to do, to plan, to communicate, to execute. For a while, Jack knew, it would be just them: two people enjoying one another because they could, and because they wanted to, and that was enough.

As Jack walked he found himself the lone soldier in a dark hallway, lit only by the soft glow of the occasional courtesy light dimmed for the hour and run on a timer. Things wouldn’t be bright again for some time. The result was the exact sort of liminality that filled him with dread; slowly, like an hour glass turned over. Bit by bit, grain by grain, it poured into him and when he ears began to ring Jack knew _it_ was coming back for him.

Adrenaline shot down Jack’s spine like a nano-boost from Ana’s gun and he didn’t hesitate, didn’t wait, because he wasn’t going to stand around and let the smoky hallucination of fear twist its way around his heart for the second time in so many hours – Jack ran. Jack ran because he could and because even the best soldier knows sometimes the best tactical move is a well-planned escape and because Gabe’s door was just around the corner.

He arrived flushed and half falling over himself, so that the fist he banged on Gabe’s door was keeping his balance as much as anything else until he could lean on the frame. Jack heard shuffling from the other side, and either it was taking Gabriel longer than usual to get up or Jack was just that tipsy from the alcohol and adrenaline still burning his veins.

By the time Gabe answered, Jack had caught his breath. His ears had stopped ringing. For the time being he had outrun the fear – just like always. It caused a little smile to roll across his face, even more so when Gabe’s eyes met his own and he snapped back into the headspace of weary excitement he had been occupying when he had first started out this way. Hesitantly hopeful, a state of mind Jack Morrison rarely frequented outside of Gabe’s presence.

“Nice of you to roll out of bed, Reyes,” Jack offered, shifting his weight on his feet and looking Gabe over. Gabe was dressed in a black undershirt and some similarly colored standard issue pants. He could see here and there with genetically enhanced precision the telltale signs of a restless sleep: sweat on the neck and armpits of his shirt, color on his cheeks and tips of his ears just enough to be noticed in the dim lights of Gibraltar after dark. “I was about to wake up the whole block.”

Gabe just made some little incredulous sound and moved out of the way – as good an invitation as any, Jack figured, and he entered Gabe’s room like he’d done it a million times before. The door clicked behind him and Jack all but threw himself onto Gabe’s bed.

The lights were low in here, too and Gabe didn’t bother turning any on now that he wasn’t alone; there was just the slatted sentry lights outside the window streaming in through the blinds. A holo-clock beside Gabe’s bed threw blue lights and shadows across the room and from where Jack sat on Gabe’s bed with his hands out behind him, Gabe looked like some kind of blue lit spirit, benevolent and familiar and beautiful.

“Jack,” Gabe said, his voice warm and clear and deep like a tropical ocean – he moved closer to the bed so that their knees were almost touching. Jack felt himself smiling from behind a barrier of numbing alcohol and he let himself slide further down so he was on his elbows. The bed felt like a wave waiting to rush up and take him under and all he wanted was for Gabe to jump in after him. How many times had Gabe “jumped in” after him? Following him into firefights, into bunks, into dreams both of the past and the future.

“Gabriel,” Jack mocked, cutting through the romantic nostalgia that had crept up on him so silent and sudden. There’d be time for that later. What mattered more was getting the feel of Gabe’s skin under his hands, and if Gabe wasn’t going to jump than Jack was willing to pull him. He reached up to snag Gabe by his shirt in a moment of drunken grace so that Jack could pull him down and onto the bed and more importantly onto _himself_.

Gabe’s weight was comforting if nothing else, with one knee on either side of Jack’s waist, and from this angle he was all Jack could see. “You smell like-“ Gabe started, leaning in close. Jack’s smirk stuck hard in his cheek and he let himself go into the feeling of Gabe’s breath on his shoulder, on his neck, behind his ear. It sent shivers of electricity down his spine and his fist on Gabe’s shirt strained for a moment, his knuckles going white in a pulses. “Whiskey and smoke, _soldado_.”

His words were smooth like butter, and Jack could feel with lazy exhilaration the way the tiny hairs on his neck stood on end as Gabe spoke. He let go of Gabe’s shirt and settled his hands on either side of Gabe’s waist, a motion that caused him to lean into them and sit back upright. The light of the holo-clock backlit him like some angel of cool blue light.

“And you smell like sweat and ass,” Jack retorted, with a low chuckle. He had always been good at managing this duality, this urge to romanticize the man who had been so constant a source of strength for him and the reality of the words he chose to convey it. Also – he _did_ smell like sweat and ass – but who didn’t after a gym session and, from what Jack could guess, a restless night’s sleep?

Gabe winced a little with a soft smile and looked away. “Yeah, well I-“ Before he could finish the sentence, Jack jerked his hips upwards, effectively throwing Gabe forward so that he could look into his eyes again. “Yeah, well, you?” Jack mimicked still smirking, and without a second thought his hands were under Gabe’s shirt and slipping beneath the waistband of his pants. All his attention now was on Gabe’s throat, his stubbled chin, his soft lips.

“ _Nada, chingado_.”

And then Gabe was kissing him – and that was _so_ like Gabe – to call him a fucker and then kiss him. It was an easy kiss like they’d had a million times before and it was better for it, spoke to Jack of a promise of a million more if he chose, they’d managed it so far and that meant they’d keep it up – right?

Right?

The question hung in his head, echoed like a drop of water in total silence, and just like that it wasn’t enough. Jack felt his throat vibrate as he made a sound of need against Gabe’s lips: a need for more, a need to chase away this doubt that things might ever be different than the way they were right now. He bit at Gabe’s lips and curled his fingernails into Gabe’s back beneath his shirt, trying to get more of him in whatever way he thought of next until Jack was pushing him off, over and down again in a mirror image of how they had just been.

Jack’s face felt hot and pink but he didn’t notice, looking down at Gabe who in his own right seemed heated if not a little dazed. In just that one moment of absence Jack found himself in want of Gabe’s taste on his lips and the feel of his skin on his own so next he was kissing his neck and pushing Gabe’s shirt up, up, up. He moved his lips to the prize he’d uncovered, lips and teeth teasing Gabe’s nipples with kisses and tongue.

Finally he heard the heady moan of reward from Gabriel’s mouth, and Jack knew then that Gabe had done it. _He’d jumped in_ – let go of whatever world he was still trying to hold onto that wasn’t the two of them, together, here and now.

Jack responded in a renewal of enthusiasm, only fed by the way Gabe’s hands were all over him now: his shoulders, his back, his stomach. They were warm and rough and now and then he’d squeeze and leave little pink ghosts behind on Jack’s skin when he moved them away.

Jack found himself suddenly thrust out of the daze of pleasure and into the next level of his desire: what had sated him a moment ago now seemed like a mere shadow of what he wanted. He moved a hand to Gabe’s thigh and squeezed and rolled to communicate this shift in attention, and as if in response Gabe put his hands on Jack’s hips and pulled him down into the sharp upward roll of his own hips.

The friction forced a sweet sound of appreciation from Jack and his eyes fluttered shut before another wave of impatience crashed over him. “Fuck, Gabe-“ He murmured, his eyes going open again so he could lean back and, hooking both fingers in Gabe’s waistband, begin to tug pointedly on the Blackwatch leader’s pants.

“Off, off, off,” Jack said with a smirk, and he let his finger unhook suddenly so that the elastic of Gabe’s pants made a satisfying slap sound as he let go and it snapped back. “ _Oye_ , farm boy, _hang on-_ “ Gabe spoke through thick laughter, and when he lifted his hips Jack tugged the pants down almost in one smooth motion. Jack could hear the sigh of relief that left Gabe as he moved to kiss at his hip bones now that he could access them.

“That’s better,” Jack said with his lips on Gabe’s thighs now, his arms curled under Gabe’s bent legs and around so that he could grab the tops of each of those perfect thighs and feel them beneath his fingers.

Honestly, Gabe had _the best_ thighs Jack had ever seen. They were so plump and soft and round and rich in color. They were sweet under his lips and Jack felt the urge to bury his face in them in a way he’d been feeling for years and wasn’t likely to change. Instead he just kissed and sucked at one and then the other slow and easy, admiring them and the thought of what lay between them and all that he wanted to do.

The dim light from outside glowed behind Gabe’s head when Jack glanced up at him, his lips still finding new spots on Gabe’s thigh to make him gasp when, looking back down, Jack all at once zeroed in on the telltale discoloration of a hickey maybe a day old, purple and round and just at the crease where Gabe’s inner thigh joined his hips. 

A rush of activity surged through Jack’s brain, his super-soldier subconscious working in overdrive to put the pieces together and it didn’t take long either because here Jack was sporting a somewhat similar patch of bruising in nearly the _exact_ same spot. And there was Jesse McCree in his head, sucking away at that spot in the sauna after their trip to Hanamura, or in the infirmary just tonight as he sat in Angela’s rolling office chair, or when and wherever the fuck he’d gotten his lips on Gabe.

_On_ _Gabe_.

Images of McCree’s head – his stupid fucking hat – buried between Gabe’s thighs flashed through him like ice in his veins and Jack didn’t think, didn’t wonder, didn’t reason – he was just gone. Up and off and out of there, his cheeks burning, mumbling something about the time and the training sim tomorrow like it was just some stock excuse he'd had stored away without knowing it. There in his mind as he shut the door behind him was just the one image burning into his brain: Jesse McCree’s outlaw-grinning-face where it shouldn’t be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay - been back at school and all sorts of things vying for my time these days but I really love these boys and all the people who have been following this/commenting/giving kudos/sharing it, so rest assured this thing is not forgotten. Can you believe how much more anxious and romantic Jack is than he lets on?? Sheesh Jack. Lighten up a little, soldado <3


	4. Stolen Whiskey

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Jack contemplates the charming enigma of Jesse McCree and floats adrift on the tumultuous tide of his feelings for Gabe - turning the training session into a fuck session that he definitely could have seen coming.

It would be a lie were Jack to say he didn’t remember “how it happened”. What would be more accurate, perhaps, would be to say that he didn’t remember _why_ it happened or – more accurate still – how it _could_ have happened. The first hickey on his thigh had been a thing of bumbling happenstance, nothing much to be said there except for the effects of quiet hope when met with a charming smile  & generous sharing of alcohol.

The _second_ one, however, was surely a result of some series of miscalculations he hadn’t noticed himself making.

Jack wasn’t exactly experiencing regret as it were, sitting in his room after a particular encounter with Blackwatch operative Jesse McCree. He was trying to piece it all together in his head: more than anything it was a sense of affirmed bewilderment he was experiencing, maybe even with a side-helping of admiration Jack wasn’t entirely sure what to do with.

It hadn’t happened quickly, either – not in a sense that Jack could use as an excuse, were he looking for one. He had come upon Jesse in a state similar to the one he’d left him in: casually sipping from a whiskey bottle in Angela’s office without a care in the world. Only by now Jesse had turned some portable media player in there on to a playlist of increasingly patriotic tunes of appreciation for the United States – whatever that meant – and was just having himself a one-man honky-tonk (or whatever the correct term is for the act of shaking your ass in perfectly-fitted American-made blue jeans while half-intoxicated).

With a moment’s delay from the whiskey, McCree recognized the look of blazing intention in Jack’s eyes when Jack appeared in the doorway, and had immediately put his hands up in mock surrender. He even stopped his idle “boot-scooting” as he would refer to it later, when re-telling a slightly edited version of the story to no one in particular (see: anyone on the Blackwatch team who would listen).

The Jack who had left Jesse not more than an hour ago had been docile and benign, if not bordering on pleasant. The Jack who crossed the room in as many steps as Jesse had organic limbs was a man on a mission, a man possessed, and not anything “pleasant” or close to it.

Jack remembered, clearly, the smooth ease with which he had pinned the cowboy against one of the windowed walls. He remembered sinking his forearm into the scratchy thickness of Jesse’s throat, seeing the panic within him only through the diluted fear-response reflected in Jesse’s brown eyes. And, less clearly, he remembered issuing an official unofficial order to Jesse that he:

“Stay. Away. From Gabriel.”

The events that followed were difficult for Jack to categorize. Not because of the whiskey he continued to imbibe as an offering from Jesse (which was, after all, appropriated from Angela), or any feelings of professional shame he might be trying to evade at the thought of having multiple trysts in the _same night_ with team members, or even the fact that Jesse had managed to talk himself out of any wrong-doings or responsibility whatsoever with regard to the marks on Gabe’s body (“Well gee, I _reckon_ I _mighta_ left some sorta somethin’, Morrison-“).

There had been a moment wherein Jack caught the reflection of himself in the darkened glass, his face over McCree’s shoulder spitting and seething and twisted with something more than jealous anger: his reflection was that of deep-seeded frustration, the fault-lines of weary rage which had appeared there on his own face like stains beneath a UV light were unrecognizable to Jack.

It was this image which kept reinserting itself into Jack’s recollection of the night’s events, set to a soundtrack of country-crossovers (country-pop, country-rock, country- _whatever_ ) and Jesse McCree’s honey-and-bourbon voice coming up with line after line of irrelevant filibustering once Jack had released his hold on him.

“No need to apologize, Jack,” Jesse had assured him with a groan, rubbing at his own neck a little and twisting his head one way and then the other as if testing it.

“Good. I hadn’t planned on it,” Jack answered, his jaw still set firm, still glancing now and then at his reflection like it might release him by morphing into the picture of righteous justice he was meant to be.

Jesse’s voice dropped what seemed like another whole octave, but he didn’t chuckle and he didn’t scoff when he said:

“Love can make you do some wild things.”

Jesse stretched again and then nodded in agreement with himself, and it was all Jack could do to say nothing. He couldn’t exactly deny it. What would have been the point in lying? What would he do – say he _didn’t_ love Gabe? The way Jesse’s eyes were sparkling at him made it clear he wouldn’t be convinced. And, anyway, that phrase just wasn’t on Jack’s lips: those were words he could not find.

Instead, he tried: “What would you know about that, McCree?”

McCree sucked his teeth in response. “Oh, _plenty_.” Jesse backed this up with a cheeky grin and a far off look that implied he was reliving a number of incidents.

Their positions were reversed this time since Jack had backed off: Jesse seated in Angela’s big important doctor chair, casually rolling himself here and there like the waves of the ocean and Jack propped up on the counter. He could have taken the exam table but even outside of regular office hours it shot twinges of anxiety through him and so he stayed away.

Jack wanted to discount Jesse’s experiences, somehow, despite knowing nothing about them. In fact it was his first instinct to tell himself that Jesse didn’t know what he was talking about. Given that the cowboy was as transient as he was, given that he moved through lovers like tissues, there was no way he could possibly understand the sort of thing Jack had with Gabe. But then he looked back and there was something so damn real in Jesse’s eyes that he couldn’t bring himself to shoot it down, so he kept his lips sealed.

“You oughta relax, Jackie-“

“ _Jackie?_ ”

“The way you swanned outta here earlier, I thought for sure you and Reyes would be _ocupado_ for a while. Instead you come back here lookin’ all _kinds_ of worked up, partner. Can’t be good for ya.”

“I don’t need you to tell me what is or isn’t good for me.”

Jesse just laughed at this and threw his hands up in surrender.

“Alright, alright, just sayin’ there’s no pride in lettin’ yerself wind up too tight to function. Can’t be of use to anyone if you’re shut up in your own head all the time.”

Something clicked inside Jack, then. He’d been trying to weather the weight of his feelings, the murky miasma of what to feel and what to do in a calm fashion – slowly, letting the answer come to him when it would. But Jesse – Jesse had a way of getting under his skin in an instant, turning up just at the right instant to pull the proverbial chair out from under him. It made him itch. It made him twist. It made him burn. And all that just made Jesse even bolder.

Jack put the whiskey bottle down on the counter beside him.

“You sure have a lot to say about me and my business, cowboy.”

Jesse visibly squirmed where he sat. It was a strange and welcome thrill to have Jack use that nickname – the Commander had no idea how fucking alike he and Reyes were. He pressed his hands into the tops of his knees and said nothing.

Jesse’s silence felt like a sign – or maybe it was just the way he was looking at Jack with hopeful expectation. Jack felt the call to re-live for the fifth of five hundredth time already what had happened with Gabe that night and he pushed it down with a declaration: “I think I like you better when you’re not talking.”

At this Jesse swallowed and sported a half-smirk. He would have rolled himself closer had he not been so transfixed by Jack’s tone, his soft but pointed gaze. Jack kept talking.

“Maybe you better come over here and finish what you started.”

So that was how _that_ happened.

That was how Jack Morrison, Strike Commander of Overwatch and King of All Hypocrites had wound up with not one but two expertly placed hickies on the inside of his thigh and both courtesy of Jesse Fucking McCree by the time he laid his head down that night. The whiskey in his blood kept him from chasing circles in his head around what he’d said to Gabe, about what he’d done. That night he dreamed of a twisting blackness that yawned and stretched out to meet him and then, as if invited, poured in through every opening and filled him up fit to bursting.

…

Jack woke early the next morning in a haze of discontent. The morning felt muted and buzzing, or maybe that was just his hangover, but it meant that he spent the better part of two hours lingering idly around his room with little memory later on as to what exactly he had done. This was not entirely uncommon.

He was the first one in the debrief room, and would likely be the last one out the door. The team could feel his tension, or at least saw it in his face, and sat in what would have otherwise been polite silence, taking in Jack’s plan of attack. It was only Angela that bored into him with that knowing look, the one he couldn’t bring himself to meet for very long. Dr. Ziegler politely informed him she would remain on-call in the infirmary, should anyone be injured. Ana Amari gave her a side-eye which she dodged with expert dexterity.

The strategy was simple: Reinhardt would take point with the team while Jack circled around to flank the others and create an opportunity to push the payload. The simplicity of the plan did nothing for the way Jack’s chest swelled with anxiety as he called out the time: “T-minus thirty, team. _Get ready to move!_ ”

In so many ways it felt like someone else’s words coming out of his mouth, but no – they were his own. Jack felt something lurking inside of him and it was this dissociative focus on the upcoming training sim that was allowing him to evade whatever it was. He held his gun like a flashlight in the dark, waiting alone by the side exit, and this time when he counted down the last five seconds his voice sounded to him clear as an Indiana church bell.

The doors opened and he dashed out, gun held to his chest, every nerve in him alive and crackling with anticipation. In his mind’s eye he saw Gabe, saw him spent and sweating, saw him kind-eyed and delicate, saw him in the crossfire of endless rounds of omnic munitions and in a world on fire. He climbed some stairs swiftly, two at a time, two sets, not sure where he was going and only mostly sure why: _take the bait, Reyes._ The rustling sound of boots-hitting-ground echoed near silently somewhere behind him and in an instant he darted out of sight against the wall of an open doorway on the other side of the catwalk he’d crossed so quickly.

Gabe’s voice came grumbled and spiteful: “ _Damn_.”

Jack didn’t need to see him to know that he was just around the corner, on the other side of the doorway, thinking he’d lost Jack and wasted his time entirely. Whatever Jack was waiting to do, this was the moment he needed to do it in.

Without a second for second thought, Jack rushed through the doorway and found Gabe’s back to him just in time to make contact with it; he slammed Gabe against one of the large synthetic steel pods on the catwalk with a satisfying _thud_.

“ _That_ was a tactical error,” Jack breathed, only mostly gloating. His gun fit so well against the curve of Gabe’s back, but his hips fit even better and this close to him Jack could feel the heat coming from the back of Gabe’s neck, his cheeks, his _anger_.

When had they both become so fucking _angry?_ Jack held Gabe’s arm behind his back like he was performing the move for a training demonstration: perfect form.

“Nice one, _chingado_ ,” Gabe cursed at him like a spiteful brother and it disarmed Jack for a moment, bringing a burst of breathless laughter from his lips before he fit a knee between Gabe’s thighs and listened for the skipping of his breath.

Instead, all he got was _Jesse Fucking McCree’s_ bullshit cowboy twang, tinny and electronic and indecipherable through Gabe’s earpiece aside from the lilting smugness that immediately gave McCree away. Jack didn’t even need to hear actual words to know that much.

Jack rolled his knee forward as he reached to switch off Gabe’s headset (“I think he’s heard enough.”) and Gabe made a low noise of satisfaction so that Jack just froze where he was, just hovered with his lips almost but not quite touching Gabe’s neck.

He’d moved his gun, silently leaned it beside them – it had always been an empty threat. They both knew that, even with the training rounds it was loaded with. Even the arm Jack had twisted behind Gabe was a performance of holding. The whole fucking training sim was a performance when you got into it, to make sure no one went stir crazy, to make sure everyone could say they had been prepared.

Jack felt Gabe lean into the weight of his leg between Gabe’s thighs and then he said his name so casually & needy: “ _Jack_.”

Jack’s breathed hard through his nose, just feeling the weight of his body against Gabe’s body against the steel wall. Here they were safe. Here they were alone.

“Fuck you,” Gabe said, and it sounded clipped and stunted but then he repeated it and it sounded melodic and maybe even affectionate this time: “Fuck you.”

Jack sucked on his own lower lip for a second and shifted his knee against Gabe’s ass. His could feel Gabe’s warm skin beneath his lips as he spoke.

“Is _that_ what you want to do, Reyes?”

He took a hold of Gabe’s waist like it was his to hold, his hands roughly peeling backwards and then down over Gabe’s ass just the same. Jack pushed himself against Gabe more now, rough, but he was present, he was watching, he wanted to see Gabe lose himself like he’d wanted the night before and so many others before that one – like maybe it’d make up for how he’d fucked it up before.

The last thing he expected from Gabe was to talk.

“Not too late for you, this time?”

Little shit.

Jack squeezed Gabe’s ass in his hand tight in response and then released the arm he’d pinned because all performances were over, now, and Jack needed to feel Gabe’s skin beneath his hands to know they were here, that Gabe was here and he could keep him here like that if only for a little while. He slipped his newly freed hand forward and under the bottom of Gabe’s shirt, felt the heated flesh of his stomach and the curling black hair that trailed downward and it made his breath catch in his throat. Gabe was so _good_ to get drunk on. So much better than stolen whiskey.

He sank his teeth into Gabe’s neck tentatively, at the same time gripping his hips with both hands and _pulling_ him back against him – or maybe that was Gabe pushing – anything to keep this feeling going, anything to get closer.

Gabe moaned: “ _Fuck_ , Jack.” His voice dropped: “Please. _Por favor_.”

But Jack was already there, he was already working on Gabe’s pants, and all the while still nipping and kissing at his ear and the skin right below it. Gabe didn’t need to plead but fuck if it didn’t sound delicious anyway. In just one smooth tug Jack yanked Gabe’s bottoms down so that he might grope and squeeze his bare ass like that was all he’d been asked to do. It was so easy to slip his hands between those cheeks and _feel_ Gabe’s knees tremble like they might buckle beneath him.

Instinctively, Jack reached into his pocket and discovered a travel-sized bottle of lube which had seen much use – probably not what these military cargo pants were designed to transport – but that didn’t stop him from skillfully coating his fingers in it. The ease with which his thumb pushed into Gabe’s ass was satisfying in the way he had once thought headshots might be.

Gabe shivered and Jack could feel him pushing against his finger, searching for more, which was a wish easily enough granted. “Mnh- you still carry _that_ with you?” Gabe asked, his eyes closed. Jack lightly nipped at the back of Gabe’s neck – he idly recalled pocketing the lube this morning in his haze of preparation, head still swimming with thoughts of Gabe and McCree and how he’d like to handle them both. He could have been surprised. He wasn’t.

“Today I did,” Jack crooned as he worked another finger into Gabe. He was so tight and hot around him, velvety soft and hungry for more.

Gabe made a sound like laughter, and elsewhere the distant _slam_ of Reinhardt’s hammer threatened to relocate them in reality. Jack paused.

“ _Dios,_ I just need you to _fuck me_ , Jack.” Jack felt a hand take a fistful of his hair and tug. “I just need you to fuck me like you were supposed to last night.”

They were the magic words – and Jack couldn’t have fucking agreed more. He pulled his fingers out of Gabe and dragged them up & over his ass so he could reach around to grip Gabe’s gorgeous cock like a prize.

“Yes,” Jack’s voice sounded low and ravenous. “ _You do_.”

Jack hissed a little at the feeling of his own hand on his own cock, and he wanted nothing more than to bury himself in Gabe in an instant and hear him try and stifle his moans against the steel but super soldier discipline dictated that he go slow and easy – just grinding against Gabe’s ass, waiting. Waiting for Gabe to say it: “ _Jack_ ,” he breathed, a small and slow whimper shaking from his lips as he repeated, “ _Por favor_.”

That was all he needed.

Gabe was hot and cloyingly soft around him, and altogether _his_ – his to hold, his to fuck, his to stroke, his to bite and grope and protect, too, from whatever he could. Jack fucked him sweetly and stroked him clumsily, lost in this feeling of existing together, on top of one another, without boundaries. The two of them flowed into each other, on and on, the sounds of Gabriel’s groans rising and falling in between him calling Jack’s name until even that wasn’t enough anymore and Jack knew what he needed.

“I want you to come for me, Gabriel,” Jack commanded, and he heard Gabe’s breath leave him before suddenly his hand was on the back of Jack’s neck and pushing down so that Jack’s errant nibbles turned into a desperate mouth biting into Gabe’s shoulder like it was anchoring him there. Jack didn’t even notice Gabe coming, doing as he was told right into his hand, because he was pouring into Gabe himself, wave after wave crashing down onto him and into Gabe like there was nowhere else for it to go.

When his eyes opened again, Jack dislodged his mouth from Gabe – _and_ his fingers, _and_ his cock. He was breathing hard, nearly panting, and the battle sounds outside had only grown closer – it made for a hurried clean-up. Jack felt the heat in his cheeks and for a second all he wanted was to hide it from Gabe, so he didn’t expect it when he moved to pick up his pulse rifle and felt two swift blows to the chest like the wind coming to reclaim his breath.

The force knocked him on his ass and he looked up to find Gabe clutching one of his shotguns like they _hadn’t_ just been furiously fucking on the catwalk. Jack fixated on the little grin Gabe was trying to hide even as he felt a boot on his chest, gently pushing him down where he’d landed on his back. He barely noticed Gabe switching his earpiece back on.

“Reyes here. Target eliminated. Think we can wrap this up now?”

The bottle of lube bit uncomfortably into Jack’s thigh through his pants pocket – _tactical error in-fucking-deed_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> IT'S HERE IT'S HERE thank you SO much to everyone who has CONTINUED to express in interest in this series!! Honestly y'all are amazing and I really don't deserve the kindness and patience you have shown me. This was super fun to write and I hope it shows. Jackie is such an anxious ball of C-PTSD sometimes, but we love him anyway. Also: why is Jesse McCree


	5. Vigilance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Jack contemplates his positioning in Gabe's life, in his own life, and the limitations of his own intentions, all while being the big party pooper he really is.

The Strike team’s loss had come swift and sudden after Gabe’s little stunt. The blow to the back from Gabriel wasn’t personal – Jack knew this – the same way Jack’s earlier ambush had been impersonal, the same way their spats over strategy and praxis were impersonal. And in private moments with his own thoughts, when they weren’t buzzing around his head like a collapsed swarm of bees, the smile that his loss brought to Gabe’s face was good to see and even better to be a part of.

So why couldn’t he fucking _relax?_

The after-party, which had largely been insisted upon and then “organized” by McCree (if you could call loudly pestering everyone into gathering in the canteen and then demanding drinks “organizing”), was more or less a cramped grouping of the tired, stressed, and unwashed. Yet Jack could see them, each of them, looking and ready to receive any comfort the gathering might squeeze out for them – they’d make it happen if they had to. Jack didn’t have that kind of resolve.

Ana lingered against the wall and accepted flagons of ale from Reinhardt (who had brought his own flagons, of course) while the two of them pretended not to be arguing about who had cost them the mission. Torbjorn, who was never one to be disheartened by a loss for long, was explaining a new prototype he was working on to a very placid looking Angela, who had seen to Jack’s wounds and declared that a personal victory for herself and worth celebrating.

At some point Jack needed to say some words about the loss, at the very least to get Reinhardt and Ana to stop fucking asking him about it, and those words were: “Reyes just got the better of me.” He didn’t know what he was going to say until he said it, and didn’t have much thoughts on it afterward, either.

It wasn’t his own team that concerned Jack.

Parties were unfamiliar to him – which they shouldn’t have been. They seemed like part and parcel of the military gig. With battle came victory, with victory came celebration, and yet it was the one part of the job that even super soldier genetic enhancing couldn’t naturalize for him. Jack Morrison was a wallflower and always would be, nothing new about that, but tonight was different. Tonight he felt out of himself, out of his skin, and filled with crippling silence that meant he was constantly aware of the impending threat of conversation.

He was sitting at a corner table, idly watching Jesse Fucking McCree crack jokes to Gabe in between drunken attempts at shuriken throwing with Genji when conversation sat itself down beside him with a graceless flop.

It was Angela, rosy-cheeked and stone-faced and giving him the eye like she was already diagnosing him.

“Having fun yet, Jack?”

The silence tried to hold his mouth shut, but Jack was stronger than it – stronger than _anything_.

“Loads. Can’t you tell?”

Angela frowned and tapped at his foot with her Caduceus staff under the table.  Jack’s own little flagon of beer rippled, full to the brim.

“Listen, Jack,” Angela started, and for a second Jack worried she might actually be trying to talk to him about this – whatever this was – his feelings, something similarly impossible to find words for here and now. “You wouldn’t happen to know anything about a bottle of whiskey going missing, would you?”

Jack looked up; Angela’s gaze was firmly fixed on the cowboy pointing finger-guns at Genji’s backside while he focused another shuriken.

Okay, that was worth something close to a smile. A smirk. _Something_. It appeared on Jack’s face and he cracked his knuckles and rolled his shoulders. Angela had a way of redirecting his stress and it was a thing he hoped she didn’t view as another job for her to do or mess for her to clean up.

“Whiskey going missing? Not my department, Angela. Sorry.”

Jack picked up his beer and drank deep from it and then, as if on cue, McCree’s voice came loud and taunting over the sounds of a jukebox which had recently appeared in the canteen without warning (similarly to how McCree himself had appeared once upon a time): “Hey _senor jefe_ , nice tac-tic-al work out there today.”

Was Jack supposed to laugh at that? Was he supposed to laugh at that shitty fucking impression of him, or the way McCree just never seemed to notice or care about all the absolute shit he was stirring up? Angela winced, as if reading Jack’s thoughts, and maybe he would have said something back to the cowboy if it wasn’t for the fact that Gabe was nearly double-over and in tears, laughing in a way Jack hadn’t seen for too long.

From where he sat, Jack could still see the reddened edges of bite marks and bruises forming on Gabe’s shoulders just peeking out from under his clothes. That would have to be enough for him.

Surely he didn’t care if McCree made Gabe laugh, surely he didn’t care if he was touching Gabe or somehow being the one to offer Gabe moments of peace & pleasure. All that mattered was that Gabe was laughing despite the bags under his eyes, that he was finding pleasure despite how high he carried his shoulders or how fucking distant he felt to Jack at any given second.

Jack knew what he wanted: to save everyone – to save _Gabe_ – from everything and every feeling of fear or emptiness or loneliness or pain; he, himself, Jack Morrison, single-handedly making the difference and without ever letting on the sheer scale of that struggle all the while – and he also knew it to be impossible. All that knowing didn’t make it any fucking easier.

…

After the party wound down (sometime after Reinhardt cracked _another_ countertop with his enthusiastic gesticulating), after the shuriken had all been found and the jukebox started to skip (probably a result of McCree insisting that hip-checking it was the only way to get it to start or stop), and after Jack ordered a clearly-drunk Angela Ziegler to stop trying to clean up and go back to her room, Jack found himself alone in the canteen.

In so many ways this was how he had spent the party: alone in the canteen. So it was fitting, he felt, that this be the case, now. The lights were low and he had already collected most of the glasses and piled them in the sink of the kitchenette when that old familiar buzz crept up on him.

Really, he should have known better, which is what he’d tell himself later – the thing, the monster, whatever it was? It liked the dark. It liked the quiet. It liked the in-between spaces when Jack’s guard was comparatively down, when he had a plan for what he was going to do and was already halfway there. It liked to ruin all these things.

Only this time it didn’t wait, it didn’t hover behind him like a curse. With his hands on the edge of the sink and his feet rooted to the floor as though by some ghastly hand of steel, it descended on him like an unseen tidal wave.

He gripped the counter and then forgot his body completely because this incorporeal liquid fear poured into him and all at once pushed the breath out of him, curled around his throat like a noose, like a hand, like a sentient constrictor and eradicated all thoughts and all sense of self outside of the sheer primal feeling of shocking panic.

When it finally released Jack, heaving and with tears in his eyes, he was on the floor with his legs splayed out in front of him, his back against the cupboard, and his own hands on his throat tight and desperate as if trying to get at whatever had been choking him. It was gone, but Jack knew better than to think it had defeated it, or chased it off. It left for whatever reasons it had arrived – and none were to do with him.

Jack couldn’t tell you exactly how he got to his room, after that, but it didn’t matter much. The obvious answer was that he’d walked, which his unlaced boots by the door seemed to confirm. What was important was he was there, in his room, with the lights on, with the door shut, and with every thought for Jesse McCree or Gabriel Reyes officially on hold or at bay.

Now was the time for vigilance. He would not be caught off guard again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HECK YEA CHAPTER FIVE!!!! I'm having so much fun getting through this, and the next and last chapter is gonna be even better IMO. Poor Jackie, he has so many big feelings, and this PTSD panic attack crap really isn't helping. :C Also McCree is a shit and we love him.


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